For one night at least, Seattle was star-struck.
Thanks to the movie “Battle in Seattle,” several celebrities graced the red carpet for the opening night of the Seattle International Film Festival Thursday and gave fans a rare brush with old-school glamour.
The Seattle premiere of the movie, a semi-fictionalized account of the 1999 WTO protests, came packed with star power, including actor and first-time director Stuart Townsend, his girlfriend and co-star Charlize Theron, singer/ actor Andre Benjamin, lead actor Martin Henderson (“The Ring”), and “Lost” casualty Michelle Rodriguez. Missing was principal Jennifer Carpenter, best known lately for playing a foul-mouthed Miami detective on “Dexter.”

Thanks goes out to Jordana Tal at Engelman & Co. for sending in the below contest information.
Here’s Your Chance To Strut With The Stars
W Desires is offering the chance to win a trip to the Hollywood premiere of Hancock, starring Will Smith and Charlize Theron.
Enter here for a chance to win.
The grand prize winner and a friend will be treated like Hollywood royalty with professional hair and makeup styling before they are whisked off to walk the red carpet at the star-studded June 30th premiere.
The prize package also includes round-trip airfare and two nights at a chic Los Angeles hotel.
Hancock in theaters July 2nd.

Living up to its name, Stuart Townsend’s “Battle in Seattle” and its stars Charlize Theron and Martin Henderson will kick off the 34th Seattle International Film Festival on May 22 at Seattle Center’s Marion Oliver McCaw Hall.
The sprawling fest, which will screen 418 films during the course of 25 days, will run through June 15. The closing-night gala, set for June 14, is Randall Miller’s “Bottle Shock,” set in California’s wine country and starring Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Chris Pine, which will screen at the Cinerama Theatre.
“This year’s SIFF is fiercely independent with wide-ranging opportunities for people to explore new ways to look at the world through cinema,” SIFF artistic director Carl Spence said. …

Charlize Theron is an actress who traverses between the mainstream (The Italian Job, Aeon Flux) and the independent (The Yards, Monster) with ease, and now she wears another hat: in Sleepwalking, she both co-stars and produces.
It’s not the first time she’s worked as a producer – that would be Monster, the little movie that could for which she won the Best Actress Oscar.
“That’s the job I signed up for,” she says when asked about her nonstop busy schedule during filming. “When people are going to give you millions and millions of dollars to go make a film, you’re responsible for them. So I spent six weeks up there before anybody came up, doing the location …

A big “thank you” to Philipp from MovieSet.com for sending me this link to the ‘Battle in Seattle’ trailer they have available on their site. They also an interview with Charlize there, just scroll through the additional videos beside the trailer and click to view it. Happy viewing.

Source: seattlepi.com

Oscar-winner Charlize Theron played the role of supportive girlfriend during her visit to the Sarasota Film Festival..
Her longtime boyfriend, Stuart Townsend, wrote and directed his first film, “Battle in Seattle,” which was to be shown in back-to-back screenings Sunday night.
Though she took center stage as an award recipient at the film festival ball Saturday night, she tried valiantly to downplay her presence and to promote Townsend and the film.
She did the same thing during an often serious, occasionally banter-filled conversation with Townsend and co-stars Martin Henderson and Michelle Rodriguez Sunday afternoon.
Townsend talked about the difficulty of writing his first script for the film about the riots that erupted during the World Trade Organization meetings …

“You know what? I like this business. I like filmmaking.”
In an industry where it’s fashionable to complain about how difficult the business can be, such a statement, if it’s uttered at all, would likely be presumed to be ironic.
But Charlize Theron is completely serious.
“I’ve never been one of those actors to hang out in my trailer and disappear. I’m fascinated by how the whole machine really works,” she said. “It’s a joy. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t. It’s too much work.”
Theron’s latest film, the indie project Sleepwalking, was a bit more work than usual for Theron, since she also served as a producer for the movie.